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UBC women's hockey team goes from worst to first in storybook season

Danielle Dube is backstopping the UBC Thunderbirds women's hockey team at a Tournament in Toronto this week.

Photograph by: Rich Lam
, UBC Photo

In the spirit of the season, with spring, a time of rebirth, just around the corner, consider the unlikely renaissance of the University of B.C. women’s hockey team.

Following a 1-21-2 season — the kind of distressing year that even a Chicago Cubs fan would find hard to contemplate — the Thunderbirds are off to Toronto this week to play in their first CIS championship tournament.

Last weekend was a magical one on the Point Grey campus: the Thunderbirds won their sixth consecutive CIS women’s volleyball title after a 3-0 victory over Alberta; the men’s basketball team defeated Victoria 72-69 to win the Canada West title, and the women’s hockey team defeated the No. 2-ranked Calgary Dinos 5-2 Sunday to win the best-of-three Canada West championship, 2-1.

“It’s been an amazing time,” said ‘Birds hockey captain Kaitlin Imai. “A national championship in volleyball, a Canada West title in basketball and now we’re off to the nationals. It shows how powerful the community of UBC athletics is.”

The T-Birds aren’t just a good hockey story: they’re a great sports story, a worst-to-first turnaround that almost defies description, if not logic.

UBC’s women’s hockey program had never won more than eight games in a season before. This year, they’re at 23 and counting, after taking down the defending national champion Dinos, who are led by Olympian Hayley Wickenheiser.

Going from one victory to 23 — UBC’s overall record, counting playoffs, regular season and pre-season is 26-10-4 — in such a short span is a remarkable trajectory, considering the core of the team is virtually the same from last season’s one-win wonders. Fourteen players are returnees.

“We got our new coach (Graham Thomas) and he turned around our mindset,” explained fourth-year player Christi Capozzi. “We’ve had some talented kids (rookies) step in and make a difference, too. But it’s really a combination of a new direction, a new mindset and focusing on the little things that make a team successful. I think part of it is that nobody had any expectations of us.”

Despite being the Canada West champions, UBC will be on the road for the third straight weekend, after playing the semifinals in Regina and the Canada West finals in Calgary, where their return was delayed by the same snow storm that affected the Canucks’ late arrival Sunday for a game against the Flames.

After arriving home at 1 a.m. Monday, the ’Birds were up bright and early Tuesday for a morning flight to Toronto, where they’re the fourth-ranked team in the final Frozen Six at the University of Toronto. UBC is in Pool A of the tournament, along with the top-ranked Montreal Carabins and the sixth-ranked Toronto Blues. St. Francis Xavier, Queen’s and Calgary are in Pool B.

The tournament starts Thursday, but UBC caught a scheduling break and won’t play until Friday.

“We’re still coming in as the underdog, and a lot of people are still going to look at us and say, ‘When is this story going to end? When is their luck going to run out?’” Capozzi explained.

If you were to pick one Thunderbird who is emblematic of this unlikely season it would be goaltender Danielle Dube, a 36-year-old mother of two, Richmond firefighter and four-time world championship gold medallist with Canada’s national women’s team. She is also the only member of the T-Birds whose image was been immortalized on an Upper Deck trading card, and the only one not experiencing campus life, other than for games and practices. She is taking all of her UBC courses online.

Dube last played for a men’s professional team — the Long Beach Ice Dogs — in the West Coast Hockey League in 2002-03 before going on a 10-year hiatus from the game. Deciding that she wanted to add coaching to her mothering and firefighting duties, Dube approached Thomas, who was named the team’s head coach last summer, about joining his staff.

He suggested Dube might benefit the team more by putting on goalie gear again. “I’d done a lot of one-on-one coaching, but never in a team dynamic before,” Dube said. “I’m glad I decided to play again. At first, I was a little concerned because I hadn’t played in so many years. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. Our goalie coach (Pasco Valana) said ‘No worries. You’ll be fine.’ And it’s turned out well. I’m learning new things. I’m not stuck in old habits.”

While Dube has played the majority of games — she was named to the Canada West first-team all-stars — backup Samantha Langford has also been a key contributor. Yet the beauty of the ’Birds’ turnaround is that no one individual has been responsible. The amazing and sudden chemistry has been a group effort, though everybody concedes that the chief alchemist, Thomas, has a lot to do with it.

A 32-year-old from Calgary, he spent the previous four seasons at Syracuse University as an associate coach under Paul Flanagan, who started the women’s hockey program there in 2009. Before that, Flanagan guided St. Lawrence University to five NCAA Frozen Four appearances in eight years.

“Graham thought my playing experience, the ups and downs I’ve been through in my career, might helped settle the team,” explained Dube. “This team is pretty much the same talent as last year, the same players. But it had developed a losing mindset that was hard to get out. Graham changed that. From Day One, he made it clear the program was going to be successful. The coaches, before, they almost didn’t care. He’s just every passionate about what he does. He got everybody to buy in. He got everybody on board.”

Their unique steadfastness through thick and thin has something to do with the three Rs — respect, relentlessness and resiliency — themes and sentiments that Thomas, the Canada West coach of the year, promotes constantly and ones that are displayed on the dressing room walls, lest any T-Bird have a momentary lapse in memory.

After losing the first game, 4-1, to Calgary, UBC had to go to double overtime on Saturday, pulling out a 5-4 victory, despite giving up a last-minute goal in regulation, to force a third and deciding game on Sunday.

“That’s part of the mental toughness, part of the mental challenge this team has had to go through and overcome ... We found a way to be resilient,” said Thomas.

In their closing 19 games, UBC went 16-2-1. That’s the very definition of regeneration, resurrection and renewal.

Spring, the season of possibility, is still a couple of weeks off. But the hockey ’Birds definitely are feeling it.

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